ng to
welcome her. During her sojourn at Avesnes, Marie despatched three
letters to Paris, in which she respectively informed the King, the
Parliament, and the municipality of her reasons for leaving the country.

"Perceiving," she wrote in that which she addressed to her son, "that my
health was failing from day to day, and that it was the Cardinal's
intention to cause me to die between four walls, I considered that in
order to save my life and my reputation, I ought to accept the offer
which was made to me by the Marquis de Vardes, to receive me in La
Capelle, a town of which he is the Governor, and where you possess
absolute power. I therefore determined to go there. When I was within
three leagues of La Capelle the Marquis de Vardes informed me that I
could not enter that place, because he had given it into the hands of
his father. I leave you to imagine what was my affliction when I saw
myself so deceived, and pursued by a body of cavalry in order to hasten
me more speedily out of your kingdom. God has granted that the artifices
of the Cardinal should be discovered. The very individuals who
negotiated the affair have confessed that it was a plot of the
Cardinal's, in order to compel me to leave the country; an extreme
measure which I dreaded above all things, and which he passionately
desired." [157]

In reply to this letter Louis XIII wrote thus: "You will allow me, if
you please, Madame, to say that the act which you have just committed,
together with what has occurred for some time past, clearly discovers to
me the nature of your intentions, and that which I may in future expect
from them. The respect which I bear towards you prevents me from being
more explicit." [158]

The other letters of the Queen-mother, although calculated to excite
upon their publication a general hatred of the Cardinal, availed her
personal cause as little as that which she had addressed to the monarch.
Her flight was blamed by all classes throughout the country; and not the
slightest movement was made in her favour either by the Parliament or
the people. Richelieu was triumphant. He had at length succeeded in
throwing suspicion upon her movements, and in compelling her to share
the odium which he had hitherto borne alone; and although she saw
herself the honoured guest of the Princes with whom she had taken
refuge, the unfortunate Marie de Medicis soon became bitterly conscious
that she had lost her former hold on the affections of t